The "Old Block" Tells All.

  She was not the “Lady of the house”, nor the landlord, nor a rent collector, but her unsoiled grace, beautiful spirit, and genuine love for me and mine made her far more than any title one could bestow upon her. She was and still is Lady K, the heart and soul of the Newsome Clan! (I love my BFAM “D”, but Kim was in a whole new class!) I hated when she brought that dog into our room and perched him on top of our refrigerator, flicking tufts of hair off her hands and blouse, after loving and smooching with “Patches”. Lady K would visit us often and seemed to always bring that little hairy creature with her as an unwelcome companion. Lady K would give my wife and me ample hugs and kisses that would last all day: even after she departed. We never talked about anything important to the household or the outside world, but her presence always lifted the weight of homelessness and despair from our heavy hearts. She was love incarnate! A special soul that God in his infinite wisdom saw fit

  We are all seeds in Papa’s Vineyard, and I am blessed to be the fateful Patriarch of this tiny vine of devoted, familial female grapes. The little one is no longer with us. No, she has not passed on to that vaporous vale of eternal sleep; however, she has been spirited away from the fold by ignorance and ill intentions. So, yes, she is lost to the Bruster Clan, (although she was never truly a Bruster, which will be explained in detail someday). However, this is an account of the ones who remain, (the little one, at least, deserved an honorable mention as her departure from the vineyard was not completely by her own design). The Bruster girls are the perfect mixture of intelligence, beauty, and dedication. They all embody the spirit of “Papa Bruster”, who has gone on to lands unknown nearly a half-century before their birth, so in truth, they never met him, or visited his earthly vineyard as I did. It is uncanny, however, that they all carry the genetic cerebral markers that mad

She is always there when a moment of monumental importance is about to occur. How does she know that this instant she has chosen to capture will be the one that everyone will remember, for all time? Is she clairvoyant, or somehow gifted by God to see the future; then imprison the moment on what is now known as film? What makes her so gifted and so insightful as to be the one and only “life photographer” who follows me and mine about snapping gem after gem? Is it the fact that she practices and teaches Yoga? Does the ability to contort her nimble body into various unearthly poses awaken some majestic power in her cell phone that extends itself to her eyes and fingers to “snap” that perfect image? Is she somehow in tune with the cosmos and privileged to know my every move, before I make it? Can she be the embodiment of a celestial being, who visits this plane of existence only to record and catalog my most significant performances? Where was she when I was a small boy, nearly drowning i

Come on, dad. Wake up! You are the ultimate educator and adjudicator in your home. It is time to step up and give your progeny a fighting chance. Teach them everything, but when they are old enough, “Let them drive their own car.” You provide the GPS and maybe a little fuel, but the destination should be their own. You should only intervene to prevent them from driving off a cliff or having a head-on collision with misfortune. Daughters are very special. They get their first free hugs from you. (Little boys and big boys want them to pay dearly and severely for symbols and actions that denote love and affection.) Don’t let your daughter leave the house hungry for love, hugs or kisses. Fill her tank up with the good stuff, so she can make it back home safely, to get filled up with more free hugs again and again. Sons, however, are knuckleheads until they grow out of the “passenger” phase of life. You know how they are. They follow and emulate the “alpha dog” in their pack, and perfor